It is only apparent for humans to interact and flourish socially as social beings. For youngsters, kindergarten is a major transitional year! This is the phase where students can learn how to share, take turns, transition, and so much more (all while learning new academic concepts as well)
Every day at home, parents play a crucial part in helping their kids develop their early social and sharing abilities. Children learn how to cooperate and share, take turns and work as a team, participate in group activities, understand basic instructions, and express their wants and needs. Preschoolers learn a lot about themselves and develop relationships with others around them at this time.
In this post, we talk about a few social skills activities that can be included in the child’s day, as an activity-time inclusion, or can be held at home, during birthday parties and play hours.
Kindergarten: The right age to develop social skills?
What causes one kid to be a social butterfly while the other is quieter and might have some evident social issues? All kids can develop social skills that will help them get along with others on the playground, in the classroom, and in different social situations. Understanding and cooperating with others are crucial social skills essential to emotional intelligence.
During Kindergarten, kids have a strong interest in other people and start making friends, starting games, and learning more about cooperating in larger groups. Children are better equipped to articulate their emotions and learn to control impulsive conduct as their vocabulary and emotional maturity boost.
Skills in listening, following rules and directions, and taking turns to develop quickly during this phase. When young kids sometimes act out, talk to them and explain the rules to build their social skills. In such a case, inquire as to how they might have acted otherwise. Create possibilities for cooperative or sharing activities, such as constructing something with friends or producing something to donate.
Social skill developing Activities
Activities can help a child to understand their feelings, and be socially active with other students as well. While its crucial to inculcate this skill early, a few activities can act as a great helping tool for these little learners.
Here are a few activities that can help your child absorb the social skills:
1. I see a….
What to do: In this game, the children can take turns locating a certain object in their surroundings that is more or less incognito. The more objects only the observer can see and others can’t, the more points the observer will get.
Outcome: This game can help build healthy social skills that would help a child learn a valuable lesson of Observation skills. Through this, the child will learn how to observe their surroundings well.
2. Community Gardening
What to do: Community gardens are cooperative initiatives on common open areas where members participate in the garden’s wellbeing, including nutritious and reasonably priced fresh produce. Children in the colony can brighten up the neighborhood by planting beautiful plants that they will take care of and nurture so that they can grow lush and green.
Outcome: This activity will help them interact and associate with community kids making it a practical and morally strong practice for kids. Through this, kids consume wholesome, organic fruits and veggies and participate in skill development, physical activity, and the creation of a green space that brings them close to nature.
3. Pictionary
What to do: Pictionary is a fantastic technique to keep youngsters interested while teaching them new words. However, if you’re playing Pictionary with children of all ages, you’ll need a variety of terms to cater to each age group.
Outcome: This activity is great for developing acting and expression skills among young children. A good social skill is to be able to express themselves properly through drawing.
4. Trust Walk
What to do: This traditional children’s team-building exercise can be completed in groups or couples. The ideal playing area is a secure, enclosed outdoor space with a start area and finish area (like a home or small park). One child gets whirled around while wearing blindfolds (but not too quickly; we don’t want any children to become queasy!). The child should be moved a few steps so that he is not exactly where he was before. Then invite a different child to visit and serve as a guide. The guide must lead the kid wearing a blindfold to the finish line, but he is not allowed to touch the child and can only give verbal clues.
Outcome: This activity can be a great way of teaching lessons about trusting peers and future colleagues for effective teamwork.
5. Observant Hearing Activities
What to do: This game is also known, as Simon says. Assign one child the name “Simon.” Simon commands the other kids to do something by saying, “Simon says…” as the other kids huddle around him. For illustration, Simon commands, “Touch your nose” and “Clap your hands,” respectively. “Each youngster must complete the action. However, if the instructor does not say “Simon Says” before any action and any child completes that action, that kid will be out as the main rule is to do that particular action only which has “Simon says”.
Outcome: Through this activity, kids learn to take command and understand them by acting and responding through actions. Similarly, they’d understand what objects, materials, and things are. For example, shake like a leaf or touch your nose. Via this, they know what a leaf looks and moves like. Similarly, they’d get to know where and how a nose feels.
6. Neighborhood NGOs
What to do: Community NGOs are run by the community kids of a locality. Yes. You heard us right! A lot of paperwork needs to be done to build an NGO, but not for a group of children keeping the neighborhood clean every evening or feeding the strays of the locality. Usually managed by adults, these hardworking activists do make the community clean and fresh.
Outcome: These activities will make kids social, kind, and humble. It’d help them realize the importance of community, and those random acts of kindness will make them morally strong human beings who’d gradually believe in the concept of a better world.
7. Scavenger Hunts
What to do: A scavenger hunt around the neighborhood is a great opportunity to meet new people. The idea behind this activity is to send teams door-to-door. First, players explain that they are on a scavenger hunt to the neighbor who answers the door. Then they ask for something from their shopping list. Common objects like rubber bands, toothpicks, biscuits, drinking straws, etc.
Outcome: This kind of search might be an enjoyable way to meet your neighbors, know them and interact with them alongside. It’s also a terrific method to keep kindergarten children active and teach them social skills.
8. Team Sports
What to do: Kids in this age range typically profit the most from activities that develop foundational gross motor abilities, such as basketball, baseball, football, soccer, and volleyball. The children can enroll in the community clubs right away so that they can play sports with kids their own age. Any sport can be played in these community clubs.
Outcome: Kids involved in sports are team players and team leaders. They’re more spirited and are great at eye-hand-mind coordination. Playing any sports activity will help kids in steaming their young-age energy and make them socially vibrant, courteous, and happy.
9. Traffic Light
What to do: This is a traditional social activity for youngsters that can be changed to improve the rapport and cooperation between the children. In the traditional version, an adult would stand at the front of the room and would sporadically shout out “RED,” “YELLOW,” or “GREEN.” The children are positioned on the other side of the room and have the ability to go quickly on GREEN, stop at RED, and slowly move on YELLOW. The twist for youngsters is to have a child change into a traffic light. Additionally, if there are enough children, they can be divided into two different teams. And the winning team is the one that completes the Traffic Lights challenge first by luring every child to their side.
Outcome: Through this game, kids learn speed and patience at the same time. It will help them and imbibe some very important life qualities among them.
Conclusion
We all need social skills to connect and communicate with people daily. This comprises both spoken and non-spoken communication, such as gestures, body language, and facial expressions. While these skills are polished and enhanced all throughout life, the roots of social skills form when a child is young. This is the time when they learn to make new friends and form a good social circle. Hence, these activities will help children to become ready for adulthood. So embed their little minds with these skills to lead a happy social life with your kids by your side.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,